Thursday, April 28, 2016

Although I'm cracking wise and quoting Yeats,

explaining all the voices Kant can't do,
the damn bear won't look back. He has a den
accessible to meat- and berry-men,
but not to those whose popcorn-covered cates
feed just themselves. He may live in a zoo,

which is his loss to bear: but one must buy
goodwill from prisoners. He can smell my heart,
so fat, so crowded, from this far away.
When I go home to betty, he will stay,
a bear among men, a bear who will not try
to rise above his nature. Take your art

to some museum, where a red Matisse,
resigned to gilt, rectangularly framed,
hangs. Never shuffles. Never craps or roars.
Blinks not. As squares dance in the in-of-doors,
my bear is moated by such white police.
Die, will you? Do. The bear will not be blamed.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Tomorrow, or tomorrow in a while,

After you lay down secateurs and pauseTo watch the housebirds swoop, and when you smile,Thinking of what a wilderness it was,This little eden, when the warmth of orderMakes of fatigue a friend, when you installA sense of fence along the gravel border,Carving out here and here and here from all,

Remember that it was not always so.Change uproots comfort, stains, then shatters, glass,Packs up a house in boxes, hands to weedsTheir lasting triumph. All disaster needsFor flowers to be overcome by grassIs one small crack through which the wild can grow.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Spring on the horizon, the nightbird says.

I’m here, you know, not going anywhere.It’s in the offing, spring is. Blackwing says,We’re here for the duration. Longtemps isOur middle name. Now bring the car around.We’ll soon fill it with primroses and peepers.We feed when you’re asleep, the jetblack says,And never seem to get enough to eat.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Under the bridges, then, where can be found

Men lost, bootless, unready hands on fireAnd hair they use as lockpicks. Or The LastPiazza, where the contract killers meetTheir lawyers, to insert a venue clauseAnd limits on assignability.Down by the tracks, it’s far too popular,Crowded with scads of housewife-realtorsWho need time off to study Avila.The Polo Club will take an application,But not call back. And Kitty’s 24Prefers you dazed, emetic but aroused.Or there’s the crossroads. Sandwiches and smokesPurchase apparent assent. Fruition isAnother matter: these are not the deansOf Mayhem College; often they forgetObjectives, falling asleep on wiry doormatsStamped with cardinals and black-capped chickadees,Right at their victim’s feet. Such tasseled shoes.Nothing says loving like a drunken bumSprawled at the doorstep, hunting knife in hand,Asking, if kicked, for dollar bills and beer.Try beneath bridges. Covered in newsprint there,Soldiers with stories, drumheads fast asleep,Forage for excess, settle for skinny sweets.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

You know, if my posts here don't suffice to fill you up, you can find more of me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/richard.epstein.3) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/rhepstein1), even, rather more infrequently, on Ello (https://ello.co/rhepstein). But if you are pressed for time (or not all that interested), it's the poems which really matter.

Saturday, April 09, 2016

The columbine grow everywhere. The bees

Pursue this with an appetite which bugsTheir eyes out, and the honey goes to feedThose other bees, so they can churn the blueDelphinium across the sculpted yard.Sweetness and flight, the noblest of the bees’Intrinsic obligations, comb-schooled: hivesAre where you have a duty, not a name;And yet you bleed for the angelica,Honeysuckle, and, late, the rose of sharon.Flight in a buzz and whirr of obligationBrings the columbine on, unto the fourthAnd fortieth generation; and the queenInvites you with the fittest floral set,Even when brown and yellow do not goWith pink or with the silence of mid-June.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

No, not a mansion, an estate,

Nor a chateau. It’s just a house.The taxes here are second rate.No pheasantry. The famous grouseIn the odd cupboards never call.We have a lot. Who has it all,He works downtown. His hands are clean,He’s made of iron, cap-a-pie.He is a gent we all have seen.The women claim he ran away,Just at proposal. We are sureHis kind is weak and won’t endureA liberal incumbency,Yet there he is. And here we are.We mow our own. And you can seeThe oil which needs a newer car.We have a vision: SaturdayWe’re going to scrub those stains away,Uncreak the door and love our wivesAnd make our children sweet and smart.Life after life, lives after lives,We barely finish where we start,Exceptional in no detail,Tepid and permanently frail.The heat increases. As we sinkBeneath our debts, the clocks explode.No one has asked us what we think.Our recent bills have come in code.It’s later than it used to be,We translate one. But there are three.A civil servant with a broomIs dancing. There’s a gravid foxHas moved into the rumpus roomWhere cellotape obstructs the locks.Lawyers assumed to boardrooms rainUpon the gold and fruited plain.An organ grinder plies his tradeAt 6 o’clock: This is the news.We waltz in the diminished shadeBetween our house and Duncan’s Mews.The children write, We have been lentBy LSE to Parliament.Thus we, content, replant the mint,Repaint the windowbox, and wait.My wife takes off her clothes. Her hintIs good enough. We shall be late,We shall be last. We shall be saved,Our names erased, our dates engraved.